Rouse Family Adventures

The last building trip to Winthrop was filled with summer camp, fairies, inflatable rattle snakes and old friends.   Annabelle got to go to fairy and gnome themed summer camp. She came back everyday covered in glitter and smiles with a metric F load of arts and crafts. F stands for fairy.  She also got invited to her first Winthrop Birthday party which was snake themed. There were about 30 inflatable rattle snakes floating around Perryaguin lake with a matching number of five year old's having the time of their lives, "swimming", splashing and generally trying not to sink by grasping onto as many inflatable rattle snakes as possible.  Annabelle also had her first run in with a rooster with bad behavior, which we nick named "Enchilada" . She survived the ordeal but is eager to eat the rooster.  Besides ensuring Annabelle had an amazing week filled with bountiful little people time we also did a lot of work with the roof. The building is 24 feet high which makes y...

As soon as we got to Winthrop we realized we had forgotten our truck, excavator and toolbox keys.  Thus had denied ourselves access to all our tools and most materials.   Brandon conjured up his old hooligan spirt and started the process of breaking into our "secure" construction site. Using some shims and a library card we were able to nose the truck door open a tiny little bit. Next we stuck a piece of leftover solid ground wire into the door and wiggled it around like a blind folded Miley Cyrus twerking around in a dark room.  Finally on one random twerk, we hit the unlock button. Once inside we now had access to our boxes of fasteners, a spare excavator key and...... a lock picking set.   Once upon a time we had learned lock picking. A skill which was cultivated by the national park service- whom took it upon themselves to lock everything they could think of and more. Vowing to never be locked out of a piece of property on public land (again) we learned a te...

I thought I’d give all our friends, family and esteemed followers an update on our first massive erection. Our concrete is poured it’s time to buy some tool belts and learn to frame!   So, we took a week off work and headed over the mountains to start assembling walls on our two story garage with apartment ontop project. Fueled by excitement and the necessity to get to the lumberyard before they closed Brandon drove feverishly around the bends and curves of the mountains passes. Annabelle happily played and chirped around in the back of the van… until she started making some funky bodily noises and frantically pointed at her mouth. Like a seasoned parent I sprung into action and grabbed the first vessel I could find… my coffee mug.. filled with a few inches of coffee in the bottom. I expertly caught a rainbow of vomit spewing from her little mouth.  I caught almost everything, only spilling a little bit on a blanket. The Stanley cup, was nearly full to the brim with victor...